Common email signature management challenges
Author: Laurence Glen | Date published: February, 28, 2025, UK | Read est: 5 min read
As an absolute necessity in professional communications and business branding, an email signature may feel like a no-brainer, almost second nature at this point. However, without the right precautions in place, signatures can scribble up productivity and your reputation.
That's why today, we're writing up and underlining the importance of email signature management. What email signature challenges might your business face? How can you avoid them? And how Exclaimer - the multi-award winning management solution - could be the answer to all these problems!
What is an email signature?
An email signature is a small but vital asset for your business. Signatures are a block of text and branding - like a logo or image - that are automatically added to the bottom of your email.
Email signatures add that extra dash of professionalism to your communications whilst ensuring everything that goes out is clearly recognisable and branded. Ultimately, they’re a vital marketing touchpoint.
When you create an email signature, key details included contain information about the sender, such as someone's name, their job title, the company, and their contact information.
What makes up an email signature?
For most businesses, when you create signatures, there are common components you'll want to add in. These include:
- Contact details
- Branding and imagery
- Email disclaimer
- Social media links
- Company accolades
- Promotional banner
Whether you're using a signature maker or designing your own, having these essentials within your email signature helps your business stand out in all the right ways. They clearly identify you to your customers, alongside establishing your credibility and branding.
Even better, they provide more avenues for people to connect with your business, be it through social media pages or specific calls to action regarding deals.
Lastly, disclaimers keep you protected! Having the right legal copy on your email keeps you compliant with industry regulations - the GDPR, for example.
Common email signature formats
Depending on your industry or needs, email signatures can be formatted differently to cater to specific requirements.
Whether it's for design or functionality, email signatures can be:
Plain text signatures
These are text-only signatures with no styling or images. Though simple, these are great for standard emails.
HTML email signatures
These are signatures that use a single image, such as branded content or a logo.
Legal Consequences
These signatures are a little more snazzy. HTML signatures support images and clickable links that can take audiences to a new destination. If you're looking to stand out and create a professional, branded email, this is the one for you!
As we mentioned above, it all comes down to what you want from your email signature. To get the ball rolling, you could try out a signature generator and play around with some designs to see which best fits your business practices.
Challenges of email signature management
HTML email signatures
When it comes to branding, consistency is everything. If you want to maintain that professional image when communicating with clients or customers, everything needs to stay on point. Email signatures are very much part of that picture. However, branding can go askew if measures aren't put in place.
For example, an employee could modify specific design templates for your emails to fit their preferences and alter the formatting - a no-go for branding. On top of this, it's easy to forget emails look different across devices; mobiles and laptops won't have the same formatting. Without the right email signature management, branding can go from easy to chaotic very quickly.
Lack of centralised control
We don't expect everyone to be an email extravagant straight off the bat, and neither does your business. In most instances, your IT team is the best contact to get email signatures looking sharp and working seamlessly.
However, if inconsistencies across your business build-up, the IT team will need to put more time and effort into fixing the issues. If you also add in business expansion, frequent change requests or multiple device formats, it's only going to add more time (and likely costs) to resolve these problems.
Ensuring legal compliance
Speaking of costs. As we mentioned above, data privacy laws like GDPR can also creep up and create challenges for email signature formats. Strict regulations require precise actions, and ensuring sensitive information and transparency in your emails is absolutely crucial.
Keeping to these regulations is easier said than done, more so if you have a large number of employees working from multiple locations and sending a lot of emails out every day. Plus, legal requirements aren't just a one-and-done; they're constantly changing. If you don't review and keep aligned with current policies, legal issues could come knocking!
Signatures lacking essential contact information
When we mentioned contact information earlier, we should've underlined its importance even more. Without the correct contact information, communication and credibility can be at stake. If email signatures have missing phone numbers, addresses, or job titles, customers will struggle to reach out and get in touch.
Not only can this lead to delays and misunderstandings, but it can also spiral into harming brand identity and missing worthwhile opportunities. Nobody wants to look unprofessional - standardising email signatures across your business ensures clarity, enhances trust, and streamlines communication. And that's where we can help!
Simplify email signature management with Exclaimer
Email signatures can offer you a wide range of extras that can boost your communication efforts. But as we've discussed, they can also come with their own challenges... Enter Exclaimer.
Email signatures shouldn’t be a headache. With this award-winning Microsoft 365 email signature management system, it won't be! Exclaimer means every email leaving your business will have a consistent, professional look, with company logos, brand colours, and custom fonts galore!
Exclaimer integrates seamlessly with all the major email platforms. Want automatic updates to business email signatures? Check! Eliminating the risk of outdated information? Check! Ensuring brand consistency across all communications? Check again!
Through Focus Group, our expert team will cover everything you need. Updating details, onboarding new employees and adding socials for your customer-facing team, we can help with it all.
Email signatures are essential, and with Exclaimer, you can transform every email into a professional, branded, and engaging message that strengthens your brand, improves efficiency, and drives marketing success.
Laurence Glen
IT Director
Our IT world, together with the ongoing development of this business-critical portfolio of services, is in very capable hands with Laurence at the helm. IBM-trained and with a 22-year track record of proven success in the IT sector ensures Laurence is perfectly placed to lead the overall IT strategy for Focus Group, ensuring we’re at the forefront of product development and service innovations in order to deliver the best possible IT technologies for our customers.
